


Your hands are louder than your voice

by pepperbar



Series: Aconite and Winter Heathers [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Motivations, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 05:46:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperbar/pseuds/pepperbar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one touches Erica anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your hands are louder than your voice

No one touches Erica anymore.

It's dangerous to touch someone during a seizure. During the first one, she flailed so hard Greenberg ended up with a black eye. Her teachers taught all the kids to stay out of range when she was seizing (as often as a few times a week until her dosages were sorted out). By the time the seizures were under control again, by the time she'd learned to recognise the auras that meant it was time to find an open space, everyone had gotten in the habit of staying out of range all the time. Even her father treats her like glass, rendered helpless and afraid of triggering the disease that changes his daughter from a little girl to a puppet with its strings cut and falling wildly through the air. She's missed a lifetime of casual handclasps and hugs, hair ruffling and shoulder bumps and knuckles rapping over board games. The only hands that touch Erica other than her own are cool and wrapped in latex, belonging to doctors and nurses with needles and bright lights to shine in her eyes.

(She thinks Mrs. McCall sees that, sometimes. Scott's mother makes a point of taking off the gloves and stroking her hair or pressing a hand against her cheek after a seizure. Erica's afraid to press into it, to ask for more or just a little longer, but sometimes, during the loneliest times, she spaces out her meds just a little too much, just to end up someplace where someone isn't afraid that touching her will make everything worse.)

Erica is completely unprepared for Derek Hale.

The hand on her forehead as she's wheeled out of the examination room is burning hot. The voice is rough and vaguely soothing, but Erica is riveted into immobility by the heat of that hand. Derek's voice and eyes and artful stubble are compelling, but she only answers him because as long as she talks, his (callused, rough) hands keep rubbing slowly up her calves. It's the longest anyone has touched her since since she was 6. It feels like _home_ and _safe_ and _daddy_ and _cryingscarythrill_ and things she hasn’t felt since the seizures started and she learned to walk with her arms wrapped tight around herself because no one else would dare.

By the time he takes her face in his hands, she'd say yes to anything, just to keep him from letting go.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Melissa's comment during 'Ice Pick' that Erica was normally so good about taking her meds.
> 
> Updated 12-14-2013: I somehow missed during Erica's scene with Melissa that she asks if Melissa's going to tell her _mom_ , so I've excised a phrase referencing her mother leaving.


End file.
